Red Room Where the Writers Are

The king has been missing, not in the way that kings have been missing in the kingdom of Haven Valley. The inhabitants of Haven Valley uses the expression of the missing king as a euphemism to say the king has died, what we would, in ordinary circumstances, say the passing of a king. But this time, it was not just the passing of a king, the king was literally missing. Besides, there was one of the notaries missing as well. In the nearby village, the blacksmith's body was found, in cold blood. The manger that kept his 7 month's baby was empty and there was no trace of its whereabouts.

It was Kaavi, the first day of the 8 days traditional week cycle and the market day of Haven Valley. The gong has been sounded, and people have come from diverse corners of the kingdom. Dignitaries and laymen, priests and pages to pay their homage to the king and to partake of the blessings of the land.

The throne was empty.

A general murmur ran through the crowd gathered at the interior chamber where the king, once a week, received all his subjects. Pages strutted about eerily, lost as to what to think. People asked questions knowing the answer would not be given them. They were anxious and uncertain. The elderly people wore expressions of both dismay and worry. This has never happened in the history of Haven Valley, not as long as any of the elders could remember. And were it to happen, it would definitely not be with Gisi, the wise and compassionate ruler.

Their speculations came to a grim stop when, out of a sudden, Wirsiy, the hunter came in, breating in an unusual manner, to announce at the already stunned crowd that the Blacksmith's body has been found in a pool of blood and that his baby was no where to be found. There was a sinister feeling that evil had passed through his home....

Lamlenn, bearer of seals, dismissed the crowd...

Dinny
Nyuyki
Vidzem
Mformi
Laasha
The way of suiyRu
Kika
Lomir
Yiy
Dzeshu

Segun
Wo Killam

none

Do you know what it feels like discovering that for eighteen years you have lived under a deception yet to awaken with the revelation that you are heir of a secret that could restore unity to a divided kingdom?

"You are at your journey's end." He looked Lalom in the face. Full
of emotion, he said: "It has been a great experience knowing you."
His words were earnest. Lalom wanted him to say more, but he just
stared at him as if he was aware of what was going in within him.
"Don't worry. We will meet again. But I just feel that it isn't
proper for me to tarry around."
"So" Those mixed emotions that made words hard to flow seized him
again. "So... you mean you call all the way just to..."
"Just to accompany you." He looked at him with affection. lalom felt,
once like his farting companion was a father. For a brief fleeting
moment, he wanted to step forward and hug him, he wanted to ask him
along, he wanted him to know that he was terribly alone. Since Ngasim
passed away, and Youssef left him, his world was threatening to fall
completely asunder.
"Never worry boy. You are already at the threshold of Haven Valley"
Lalom felt the big arms of the Sentry around him. The
smell of tobacco reeled through his clothes and a strong masculine
ordour. He did not care, he felt a wave of of scret joy, deep
inside him. "You will still see me when the clarion sound sounds.
But for now, it is for your good that you get to Haven valley discreetly."
It was with great effort that Lalom concealed his tears, but this wasn't
without a noticeable moisture around the curves of his eye.
"Promise me you will be fine"
"Yes I will."
The old man drew again closer, his expression was curiously calm.
"One more thing boy. To him whom great gifts are given, greater responsibility
is demanded also. You will learn a lot, slowly, sometimes through the very
rough way." He looked into his eyes again. "Be bold. And silence is a
weapon upon which a destiny thrives."
lalom shook his head.
The shook hands and parted. Lalom mounted upon the horse and rod down
the slope. Haven Valley gleamed below at his feet. He saw the Walls
of the Kingdom. His heart raced. At last here he was, staring at that world
where, they say, his destiny is linked. Haven Valley! That was a thought
that pierced his heart.
The path went down through a gorge.

"I see you miss your friend."
"Yes, I love him."
"Don't worry. All that we love always come back to us."
"I hope so" Lalom said warily, "But he was mad."
"He will understand"
The Sentry's voice was calm yet convincing. Lalom had developed a
secret fondness for him, the way he said things was particularty.
"Let's move."

He tripped and fell down hands thrown foward to catch the fall. "Hush you are!"
"Was a silly fall boy" He said brushing the dust off him.
"Hope you aren't hurt."
"Nae." He smiled. "Keep going."

The went through the country side. The earth looked barren. Through winding
paths that looked deserted for a very long time. Lalom was feverish. The kind of
fever that wasn't a physical ailment. Something sinister seemed to steal into
his heart. His mind was a numb block, an icy pain seared through his brain. He
barely suppressed the idea to cry. But he'd jerked slighted backward and the Sentry
noticed something was amiss.
"Are you okay?"
The house neighed galloping to a stop. Lalom felt the tight grip of the Sentry
on his back as he skidded on the horse. He was certain of nothing, the earth
seemed to spin around it and everything spun with it. Gyrfalcon flew above his
head. In a semi-conscious state, he heard the growling sounds of Lam.

3333

Lalom tried to get up. His vision was still blurred and the sight of the sunrays
beat piercingly on him. "Slowly boy, and good morning"

It was not the Sentry but a pair of two round heads looking down amazingly at him.
The Sentry smoked his pipe at a corner of the hearth. Lam lay at the edge of the
mat, woven of Raffia and stripes of ivy plants. The two faces smiled. They looked
so darn identical Lalom had the weird feeling he was seeing double. Just that one of
of the pair smiled broadly while his brother merely grinned timidly.
"Good morning" the little voices echoed in his ears.
"Good morning" He said. He tried to wring himself out of bed. But pain seared
through him. "oops. Gentler boy. It has been a rough ride."
"Where are we?"
"We are just leagues away from Haven Valley."
"Yes, but what is this place? Whose house is it?"
A hefty man came into the room. He seemed to breath hard. His eyes were broad.
"Welcome Lalom. Hope you had a great rest."
Lalom heaved a sigh, and nodded. The man did not tarry in the room. He left
as though he had ants on his heels. Then was back again within a few minutes holding
and cylindrical bowl in hand.
"This is steamy herbs. They will do you much good."
"The boy had carried more than his strength could let him." The sentry said.
"This will revitalize him. There is some huckleberry and rarest of healthy
herbs" The hefty man offered the bowl to Lalom. The vapour moved up to his face.
The Sentry cautioned him to sip slowly else it would burn his tongue, he did
not need to be remided, for his tongue was already burned. He felt alive after
drinking the savoury soup.

He had a heavy meal of pounded cocoyams with stewed beef. He ate silently, lost
in his gloomy thoughts. No one disturbed him. Even the Sentry appeared no where
to be found just like he'd understood that he needed time alone to enter deeper
into his own world.

Lalom had been used to being alone. His prolonged moments with Ngasim were just
occasional. For the past days, his experience had led him from the elation of
easy companionship to a sudden irritation. Although it felt great getting along
with the Sentry, the thought of Ngasim haunted him direly. To wake up with the
creepy feeling that Ngsaim would talk to him, or to hear footsteps and then be
assailed with the thought of Ngasim.

He leaned on the bed on his back, thrust open, and supporting his head with both
hands and gazed blankl wooden roof. The eaves and the matted grass the constituted
the bulk of the mattress felt warm on his back. He could not understand how
he came to this place. He could not even understand why he lived. Since Ngasim
passed away, his life had become senseless. Although he had come acrossfascinating
events, there was a hole in his heart that only Ngasim could fill. His sense of solitude
returned - he felt strangely attracted to his old life with Ngasim, and at thesame
time, he felt a grim sorrow eating within him for the loss of Ngsim. His ached
at the thought that he had lived with Ngasim believing him to be his father just
to be shaken out of stupor in a night.

Things shall never be the same again.

Then he heard the flapping of the wings and Gyrfalcon arched itself through the
open door and settled on his stomach. "Oouch." Lalom smiled stroking the birds
light wings. "You have been hunting around! Did you see Lam? Sleeping all day"
Gyrfalcon stared at him with its red flaming eyes and jerked its right wing upwards.
"That means yes." Lalom grinned. "If you understand my language, please lift your
left wing now." Suddenly, to his surprise, Gyrfalcon's left wing stood up readily.
"That is pretty certain we can speak a lot of things." Its right wing was up again.
Lalom took the bird in his hands. "You are a great one."
"Can you hear my thoughts?" The right wing sprang up again.
Elated Lalom lay down and stretched himself in the wide bed. The medal glistened
on his chest leaving a soothing, cold feeling on his bare skin. The thoughts of
being followed completely vanished.
"Gyrfalcon!" he whispered in his mind as a thought suddenly edged him. "Can you
play the Sentry and be at the look-out for any vandals following us?" The bird
The gently jerking of the right wing indicated that all would be well. Then Lalom
lay back to sleep eased from one of those oppressing thoughts that keep sway in his
mind.

That afternoon, a little after he woke up, he heard the loose beats of the tam-tam
resounding rhytmically across the wild land. Hell! What with that thunderous sound!
He knew people dance and celebrate together. It has been years when Ngasim would
bring him around by the Warrior Dance. That was at his early teens. But then he could
not understand anything. The memory of those years flitted through his mind, the
wild rhythm of a country-fold that swirled the air, the spampede of feet on the
ground risen with the rhythm of the tam-tam and the metal gongs. Hastily, without any
further thought wound his robe arund him. He firmly tightened his ceinture. Clad in
his sword, he secured the latch of the door and went out to the direction of the
thrumming tam-tam sounds.

The sun had grown pale in the sky and gone leeward. Dusk sprayed a gray color over
the earth.

mchevrier@bellnet.ca

At the front porch to his house, a young-simple lady was throwing rice grains
to pigeons. They fluttered in the air. When lalom climbed the final step of
the staircase, she halted what she was doing and gave him a customary "Good day"
Lalom fumbled as usual.
"I have come to meet the bearer of the Royal Seals."
"Does he know you were coming sir?"
"I guess, Yes"
"Okay. Just a minute." She said disappearing into a wide door that opened to a
wide spiralling staircase of polished mahogany. She had looked at Lalom the way
everyone looked at him. He has heard many times people telling him that he had
unusual eyes. Youssef'd often commented on the strangeness of his eyes. It was
not just the bluish sheen that shone around the iris, there was also that tint
of lividness that looked like a window opening to a wide universe, or was it
a door to see through? It was difficult to describe, people have seen it differently
and different people also had different ways of seeing his eyes.

At first Lalom did not take it seriously. But lately he had come to understand that
when he was under emotion, there was an energy that emanated from his eyes.
This he could see readily in the reaction of those who looked at him. He could
not completely ignore then, sometimes he blushed when someone commented on his
eyes, not knowing what to say. He has gradually come to admit that there was
something definitely unusual about his eyes, it was not only his eyes, there was
also that awareness that he was different, an ally of a scheme that never de-
pended on him. The only that troubled his young mind was the thought of evil.
"The bearer will be down in a while" A sweet melodious voice wound him out from
his stupor. "May you please follow me?"
The girl led him in. But they took to a left corridor that ran under the spiralling
staircase. They came to a wide room, empty of furniture but chairs that stood
in semi-circular manner. The walls were clean with hangings of tableau of
what Lalom thought to be paintings or representations of heros. There were
also symbols that he understood belonged to different kings and heroes of Haven
Valley.

His heart raced inside him.

I will leave you now. Lalom looked startlingly at the girl who seemed to ask
something. "By the way, I am Lalom."
"I am Iris. The last daughter of the Bearer of Seals"
Lalom responded smiled without himself. "I am Lalom." He said with an even, detached voice.
Just then the door swung opened and a tall figure came in. The solemn
expression on his face indicated he was not given into to frivolities neither
did he entertain the easy vice of carelessness.
He smiled. A smile that was simple, frank. It had a lot of things it revealed.
Lalom saw them in that hiatus of an instant between breath and word: there
was something of that purity of age that reflected on his face. Innocence and
fierce temper; sobriety and discipline.
"Lalom."
Lalom fumbled. But the bearer of seals, to whom none offers a hand in salutation
stretched his hand to Lalom. The moment he said Lalom, something moved inside
the boy, something confident, and a rare sense of comeliness. "Welcome home , son."
He said. Lalom muttered something inaudibly, something like surprise.
"Thank you father." He said as the old man waved him to a chair.

The door opened and a young man in his mid-twenties carrying a tray of wooden cups
and a jug of fresh palm wine. "Greetings father." He said. And winked at Lalom who
smiled back.
"Greetings son."
The young man offered them the wooden cups with carvings and poured wine into them.
Lalom stared at the cup while the young exited.
"To your eighteenth birthday boy. And" he looked at Lalom in the eye, "Peace to
the brave soul of Ngasim."
Lalom raised his cup.
"Do you have good wine beyond the hills?"
"I dunno. But Ngasim used to bring some."
"Yes, he drank like a beer." lalom could not help but laugh remembering the occasions
his foster father came home tipsy. "But the great thing about him is, he never lose
his wits."

The men sat in a semi-circle in the wide hall. Their faces were all serene but for one. As Dzeshu eyed the young boy through his left eye, he rebuked himself silently for not nipping the life off the boy early enough when the occasion presented itself. His Master would be nothing but happy for ridding the scheme of such an idiot: Well it isn't yet over. He'd have to get a chance to strike him in the interval between now and the assault, he will come up with something serious. For the moment, he would concentrate, he would gauge things and see loopholes. He was most powerful of all the foes of Haven Valley because he could operate from within the group.

No sound was heard. The silence filled the empty spaces between them, a little clearing of the phlegm, a creak of the chair. No wine was shared. It was not a meeting to celebrate something. It was a call to decide on something.

"Elders of Haven Valley, chosen not by lot but by the purity of heart with which you gave your life for truth unpon the hinges of the doors of Haven Valley rest. May you judge, if Lalom, who calims to hold the blood and valor, worthy of the heirs of Haven Valley. You who have chosen to follow the secret path of SuiyRun, by the Sacred seals, I entreat you to judge this son of ours if he is worthy to join in our circle for the quest for that which is noble, and true."

There was a brief pause. No one stirred. Engrossed in thought, they gazed at the bourn of fire that flickered in a bowl amidst them. Its flame lingered just a little above the bowl that contained it.

From a raffia bag, Lamlenn drew up a bulk of parchment, and unrolled them ceremoniously layer by layer. He handed the blank parchments to the elder who sat closest to him and they passed from hand to hand, each of them took a piece of the parchment.

Lalom was a little wary and dazed by a presence beyond him. A tendril of his mind jerked off, it pushed itself until a faint light dawned on it. Then without him willing, he saw seven pairs of eyes staring at him. Six of them stared with sympathy, he felt like he was a brother to them, but there was this pair that nudged at him, with fierceness, it tried to see beyond the defenses he could muster.

An undefined fear gripped him. He shivered.

With a firm act of will he wrested his mind from the hold of that dark stare. Gining full consciousness of his surrounding, he heard Lamlenn asking.
"Are you alright?"
"Yeah." He said, unsure of his words. "I am okay"
"Elders of SuiyRun.. we may proceed."

An elderly man whon Lalom was to recognize as the Chef of the secret army stood up; and looked around the house. He bowed his head, what Lalom thought of as a gesture of submission or humility. He moved towrads the centre, stood astride the flikering flame, and turning his gaze to Lalom said: "The one thing tha lies between the people and their dream."
Lalom answered instinctively: "It exists no longer. The bridge that stand between the King and a Nymph." The old man nodded. "He who sees the heart of Haven Valley knows, I have nothing against you. Brave heart of warrior." He held the piece of parchment over the flame and burning it left red cirls of letters "LALOM".

Lalom's heart thrummed as the second elder stood up, and repeated the same gestures, then asked Lalom: "He keeps and nourishes the life of the king" He looked at Lalom inquiringly. The boy, with a placid mien, answered at though the answer was at the tip of his fingers: "Its leaves dry upon the scorching sun. Its roots sear deep down feeding it from the gold of the earth. The piece plant." The old man nodded. "He who sees the heart of Haven Valley knows, I have nothing against you. Brave heart of a counsellor." Lalom watched the curls of flame forming his name that slowly disappeared into thin air.

The third elder was a robust man with acoarse voice. After repeating the same gestures, he asked: "He breached the peace. And wanders the unbeaten tracks of the badlands": Lalom responded with calm. "The cursed. He is the Panther-Man whose name no one knows." He nodded. "He who sees the heart of Haven Valley knows, I have nothing against you."

The fourth elder was a wee fellow with a bald head. After the customary gestures, he stammered: "If his strength is neither in his sword, nor in his arrow. Where does the king draw his strength.?" Lalom spoke as if he saw it somewhere: "He who fought the dragon single-handedly and tore its wings, and broke its scales. He riped it of its living eye. He has the fire of the dragon of Ngom." He nodded: "He who sees the heart of Haven Valley knows, I have nothing against you"

Lamlenn was the fourth. His question was simple: "The dwelling!" He looked at Lalom. "It is the passage of the king through the place of fire. Home of the brave of Haven Valley." "He who sees the heart of Haven Valley knows, I have nothing against you"

It was Dzeshu's turn. He stood it morosely. Lalom was aware of his every movement unlike with the others. He was giddy and wondered what he would ask him. And after the customary gestures, he cleared his throat. When he lifted he eyes, Lalom recognized him: "He rides upon a bird of prey. He was born upon the heat of war." Lalom looked at him. "He who comes from a dark past and rides upon the wings of a Gyrfalcon. He is the Seer." He looked round the house. Then nodded. "He who sees the heart of Haven Valley knows, I have nothing against you"

Lamlenn led Lalom through secret door that opened to a semi-dark chamber. Muttering some ancient words